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Volaris Airlines service between Denver, Mexico City starts Saturday

The Volaris counter at DIA was readied Friday for business to begin Saturday, when the first flight from Mexico City was to arrive. (Andy Cross, The Denver Post)

The first nonstop Volaris Airlines flight from Mexico City to Denver is scheduled to touch down at Denver International Airport on Saturday, ferrying a large delegation of local leaders returning from a trade mission to the neighboring nation.

"The reason these flights are important is because they facilitate relations, both economic and cultural, as well as travel and tourism," said Paul Washington, Denver's economic-development director.

The Mexico-based airline now offers the only year-round service between the two cities. Aero-mexico and United provide flights on a seasonal basis. Mexicana Airlines flew a Mexico City-Denver route prior to declaring bankruptcy in August 2010.

Since the North American Free Trade Agreement was implemented in 1994, Washington said, trade with Mexico has increased threefold and 40 percent of all imports from Mexico are categorized as value-added, meaning that "from a trade standpoint, our country's fortunes grow as Mexico's fortunes grow," Washington said.

During their day-and-a-half trip, government and business leaders on the mission pursued goals including foreign direct investment; logistics and distribution around the U.S. of Mexican goods from a central Denver hub; energy technology, particularly natural gas and clean tech; and tourism.

"Some of these conversations were more mature than others, and so this trip was opportune because we were able to continue certain conversations as well as build some new ones," Washington said.

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And while business opportunities may exist in the not-so-distant future, the flight's immediate benefit is largely viewed as tourism. The flight is expected to bring in about 6,000 visitors to Colorado a year.

"Mexico City sent 13 million tourists to the U.S., and we are just trying to tap into that tourism," said Richard Scharf, president and chief executive of Visit Denver. "It's the world's 12th-largest economy."

Frontier, Southwest and United have been offering year-round service to some of Mexico's beach destinations, but Scharf hailed this flight's ability to reach the "upscale tourism market" that is also strongly rooted in family connections between the two cities.

Volaris will operate the flight with the 144-seat Airbus A319 with, for now, one flight per week each way.

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